James Damore was the engineer at Google who pointed out that gender differences in brain structure led to a difference in predisposition about how to make a living. No, he didn’t say that women couldn’t code nor anything so stupid. Rather, that given the manner in which brain types are differently distributed across then genders there will be, in certain occupations, a disproportionate number of people of one or another gender. Or even sex, if you care to make the differentiation there.
This was quite obviously howled down as BadThink.
Which is a bit of a problem as GoodThink requires that we agree that there are women trapped in male bodies, men in female. It being the brain, and the differences in it, which determine that gender, physical happenstance apparent sex. Thus we should all be aiding those whose brain and gender are in a mismatch with their physical sex to bring them into alignment.
At which point we’ve a little conundrum. I have no problem at all either believing or agreeing with the idea that some biologically male believe themselves to be female (vice versa applying of course) and that they’d be happier with some form of transition. OK – no one has ever said that nature gets it right every time.
I’ve also no problem at all with the idea that there are brain types predisposed to certain ways of thinking about the world, those types leading to different interests in life and if not aptitude then predispositions to certain occupations. I’m mature enough in years to know very well that there are certain things I shouldn’t be trying to do for a living for example. Brain types and interests differ. I’ve also got no problem with the idea that such types are unevenly distributed across physical sex attributes. As near all the science on the issue tells us of course.
As James Damore told us before he was fired for having said so.
But now we’ve got this:
People questioning their gender identity could be offered brain scans to determine whether they are transgender, according to a new study.
Breakthrough research has revealed for the first time evidence that the brain activity of people who feel they inhabit the wrong body closely resembles that of the gender they want to embrace.
Analysis of around 160 participants showed that biological males with gender dysphoria – the experience of discomfort or distress due to their biological sex – had a brain structure and neurological patterns similar to biological females, and vice versa.
The analysis revealed that the distinct neurological differences are detectable during childhood.
Note that this isn’t to do with sexual appetite – for we’ve not found any differences in such dependent upon what gets those juices flowing.
So we’re in this politically incorrect space. Brain differences are large enough that we can tell who has a female brain, a female brain in a male (pre-pubertal but still) body. But we’re also adamant that such differences make no difference about life choices.
Actually, that they make sufficiently large differences to life choices about a foreskin or a prepuce that we must aid in that transition, but none at all to what people might be interested in the other 23.5 hours of the day like how they’re going to make a living.
Male and female brains are obviously and clearly different enough that surgery is justified. Male and female brains aren’t different enough that more male coders and more female nurses is just the way it pans out.
What we’re being told we’ve got to believe in this brave new world is difficult to swallow really, isn’t it? I personally run with the differences happen and we should deal with them where we can, put up with them where we must. I can understand the logical appeal of there being no differences so shut up everyone – not that that is what the science tells us. But the differences are there, we must do something about them, everything in fact other than noting the effects upon what people do with their lives. Just can’t see that one working although that is indeed what GoodThink tries to tell us we must believe.
This is a return to the discredited dog bark hypothesis on the origin of gayness. If a pregnant woman experienced a sudden shock around the end of the first trimester, the interruption or overproduction of hormones would cause the foetal brain to develop differently. The only problem was that MRI scans failed to show any difference between a gay brain and a straight brain. Scans do however show substantial differences between a male and a female brain. Now someone has conducted “breakthrough” research i.e. never observed before in thousands of studies therefore quite possibly an outlier, statistical anomaly or straightforward… Read more »
As with race, we are drowning in assertions that differences matter, and mandates that differences not be allowed to matter, and that we proceed as though all people were interchangeable and did everything equally well. Men pretending to be women have achieved parity of taxation, government certification and endorsement of their “marriages,” and are now agitating for protection against disapproval, immunity from any consequences of their decision, banning of attempts to cure their desire to pretend, and compulsion for businesses to join them in their pretend game. I don’t trust the “science” to detect incipient gender dysphoria any more than… Read more »